Susan Moldenhaue’s approach to image-making is an accumulation of methods she has adopted over time—composing in the camera at the time of exposure, processing digital captures in Photoshop to transform color images into black-and-white, and making tonal adjustments such as dodging and burning.  Her work is personal, created alone or in collaboration with women to create lyrical, emotive imagery from place-based explorations and expressed in fine art prints. 

 

Over the years, she has used her presence in images in several ways, interjecting her hand or shadow into landscapes, performing with fabrics in front of the camera lens, and, more recently, using self-reflections as a pictorial idea. Her recent street work in Laramie, WY, a place she has quietly observed for more than 30 years, explores time, place, and identity. The images are visually complex, combining interior and exterior perspectives simultaneously, and placing vernacular architecture, Western iconography, and mythology with her self-images.

Moldenhauer received a BFA in printmaking from Northern Illinois University and an MFA in photography from Penn State University. In 2017, she retired after 33 years in arts administration, curation, and community arts advocacy. Today, she devotes her time to her studio practice. She lives in Laramie, WY.